


Throw it Out With the Bath-Water

by svelkie



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bathing/Washing, Baz you're wearing jeans, Boyfriends, Boys In Love, Canon Gay Relationship, Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), Carry On Countdown 2019, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hair Washing, Jeans, M/M, Magical Realism, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Post-Book 1: Carry On, Pre-Book 2: Wayward Son, References to Depression, Talking, Undressing, Weight Gain, baz - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svelkie/pseuds/svelkie
Summary: Simon's too weary to get out of bed on his own, but Baz undresses him, gives him a bath, and tells him that grief is alright. Sweet, simple, maybe a tad bit sexy.Takes place in the slow, dead time before Wayward Son.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch & Simon Snow, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 10
Kudos: 100





	Throw it Out With the Bath-Water

**SIMON**

I’m tired of laying on the couch, but I don’t know where else I can lie in this flat. If I lie in my bed, I won’t see Baz when he comes by to feed me vegetables. He won’t barge in on me. Somehow, by being so pathetic and frail, I’ve squashed the bravado out of him.

Maybe it was never there. Maybe it can only exist when my bravado is there too, challenging him to a metaphorical foot race of stubbornness, insisting that he’s perfectly vile. 

At least that kept me going. I have no idea what’s keeping me going now, except the fructose and alcohol in these goddamn ciders. Merlin knows how many I’ve had lying here on this couch. Thousands, probably. I can taste apple in my sleep; I think it's soaked into my tongue permanently. This morning I figured Baz might stand to look at me a touch easier in jeans instead of these crunkled mesh shorts, and maybe if I were easier on his eyes I could stand to look him in the eyes again. It’s harder to meet his eyes right now than it is to go to class, and neither of those things are getting done. So I figured I’d wear jeans. But denim is structured around the waist in a way unlike all the mesh football shorts in the world, and so as of this morning, I know they’re going straight to my stomach.

Honestly, I can’t say I mind. I feel soft on the outside and soft on the inside, bruised, and at least I’m not starving like every summer of my short, miraculous facade of a life. How nutritious these ciders are, I can’t say, but the alcoholic content warms up my brain enough that I can fall asleep or at least feel fuzzy and dead throughout the afternoon. I need something to dull the jabs.

Because when I’m hungry and sober, I’m in pain. The memory of everything hurts. It’s why I don’t like to shower anymore—when I stand under the water, wet and alone, it’s like scraping off a scab that covers my entire body and brain. All the death and destruction, the lies and terror, the loss and the liquidification of assets I never owned, all come streaming in with the shower water and burn my eyes and make my throat raw.

I can’t invite crying like that.

Enough crying goes on at night, when Penny is up taking notes on textbooks and her previous notes in her room, and Baz is definitely not here. I lie on my back, never quite getting accustomed to the leathery unevenness between my back and the bed, and practically screw my eyes out of my head trying to fall asleep. And a tear leaks out the corner of my eye.

Some nights I ball up and sob. I can’t sleep without Baz breathing, it always happened in the summer whenever I wasn’t already stone tired, and if he’s here it’s even worse. Then I can’t talk and I can’t sleep and I can’t even cry. Some nights I am numb.

I try wanking off sometimes. I don’t usually feel like it. One night last week I really did, though. I went to bed a bit drunk, and I went sort of slowly and built it up like a high castle tower and suddenly I was thinking about Watford again and the tower room. Baz breathing. Baz breathing heavily in rhythm with me and Baz biting his lip with his white little fangs and looking like a supermodel with an unbuttoned collar and beautiful fucking hands.

I only felt good, remembering, and then I came and after that his face hurt too much to picture. I couldn’t stop sobbing for half an hour. Penny probably came by and I screamed at her to let me alone, I imagine, although I don’t remember that.

So I don’t masturbate that often. I never thought I’d pine for the days when I muffled my face with my own pillow and did it under the Watford sheets. I had this thick green sock, no match, that I’d do it into.

Baz with his vampire ear canals. Probably heard every minuscule bit of relief, that bastard. I wish I felt like that was a grand joke, or turned on or even awkward about that. But I just feel sad.

He’s here every day. Why is he already gone?

I know it’s not him who’s gone. He’s more present than ever. He’s more alive and gorgeous every day, full of blood. It’s me. I don’t know how he doesn’t know it yet. I’m not here, I’m not the same, I’m not myself. The boy he grew up in a tower with, bickered with, fought with, fell in love with, is gone.

I’m the husk of a slightly alcoholic young man—and I’m husky now, too. And I’m normal. I don’t glow. I’m nothing like the sun he fell into; I’m not even a sunny day.

I’m a useless normal, too, considering how little I speak, and how little established power my words have, anyway.

And this crushing pathetic self hatred is so bloody dismal.

I got the button to close, and I zipped them alright, but there’s a certain tightness in the thigh. And I looked in Penny’s mirror for the first time in weeks. My hair’s a straggly overgrown mess, and my body’s bulging at the waistband of my jeans.

When I sat on the bed, my belly protested the enclosed space and pushed up and back. These are my tightest jeans, to be fair, and even at the end of a long, scone filled school year could be a bit squeaky. But that was in a muscular way too. A strong way.

I’m not strong. And I know that has nothing to do with the pudge on my stomach.

I’m not strong because I never was. I just did what I thought I had to do. People counted on me.

Who’s counting on me now? Just Baz, and I let him down every time I twist the cap off another angry orchard.

I was headstrong once, when I knocked down Baz’s ornate front door even though I knew he was a vampire and I knew his family hated me with a cold dead passion. I saw him in jeans and my life rearranged. Something unconscious clicked into place; something I’d been growing for years deep down in my stomach opened up and blossomed and took me by the neck and shoved me all the way into Baz’s bloodless arms. I knew then the power of an outfit change.

Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do here, now.

But I need some better-fitting jeans.

...

**BAZ**

Bleeding banshee tits, his bedroom is dark.

In our tower at Watford, Simon never closed the shades. When the sun rose in the morning and pricked him right in the eyes, he only snuggled deeper into sleep. Never so much for me.

When I was low on blood or drained from a measles night spent in the catacombs, that morning sunlight grated me. But I stole glances at how it fell on his flattened hair. And his sleepy little scowl. He relaxed into the morning sunlight like mozzarella into French onion soup. Equally savory, too.

The shades are down now, and Simon’s bed is shrouded in a strange darkness that I can practically taste. It’s tangy and heavy and it clearly doesn’t lift with sunrise. If anything, it pressed harder.

Simon is asleep. I lean over him and his eyes are stiff and he’s flushed, either leftovers from last nights drinking or the hot touch of a late night cry. It makes my stomach turn knowing that it’s probably both. There are clothes all over the floor, soft but overwhelming piles, and I drop the football jersey amongst them. Simon is a whirlwind hazard, but he’s not usually untidy. He’d huff at me for leaving too many bottles of skincare scattered around the sink, and I’d snap at him because he was right. Three variations of vibrance-enhancing sunscreen are at least two bottles too many. But what can I say? I was a sensitive little fucker, and this pale dead skin desperately wanted to retain some youthful vitality at the age of fourteen.

It’s not like Simon to leave such a mess. Even if he is a careless bastard who doesn’t pay attention to order. Even if he never did iron his shirts.

All the skin brightening cream in the world can’t brighten up his face now. Merlin almighty. I only wish.

Simon’s eyes are crusty and his scent is so rich and tangible that I have an intense, fleeting fantasy of inserting my entire mouth into his and sucking on his tongue like an ice lolly.

Instead, I back out and close the door. I’m trying to banish this fucking lump from my throat.

**SIMON**

Baz leaves without speaking to me. I can’t blame him; I’m a disgusting heap. I should thank him for not pointing that out. At least I know he’s not looking at me any longer.

He should’ve said, “Fold your clothes, you sore lazy bugger. And put a comb through that mange, or finger comb it at the very least. Come to mention it, Snow, what’s the last shower you’ve had?” I think this lenience is what’s killing me.

Not that I should need discipline. Like a child. I’ve been finger-combing my hair of my own accord ever since it first coiled out of my infant head. And now I’m too tired to do it.

All I do is lay around and eat and sleep. All re-charging activities. Why can’t I get charged?

My light is gone. I know it. Gone and left me exhausted, every day, every night, every second. I never knew how much I relied on others; when I was sharing magic, pushing power into someone, I felt strong and generous and right.

Now I know it was never anyone relying on me. I relied on everyone else. I didn’t have magic, I was magic—everything good about me. When I pushed it all out, I lost the energy of the whole word, energy that was always and never mine.

Now the best thing I was is gone. And Baz won’t talk to me—and why should he, when I’m here in the dark like slime on the inside of a rotting log—and I can’t stand in front of the mirror long enough to comb my hair.

**BAZ**

The wall in the corridor is used my to presence by now. I do pause nearly every time to compose myself and suck down the constricting pangs in my throat before I have to go back to the kitchen and deal with Bunce and her blunt, pushy conversation.

I’m still paused outside the door when I hear shifting around in the blankets in a very awake-Simon way. I have the balls and the charm to confront a bar of full-grown vampires, undercover, without cracking an eyebrow. And yet… Simon Snow, faking sleep, turns the stolen cat blood in me to ice. No, it’s more like a milkshake. Cold, frothy, indulgent beyond desire… and making me sick to my stomach after just one slurp too many.

Or one too many words unspoken.

I swing open the door and it bangs against the wall. Light pierces the dragon cave of misery.

Simon jolts to his feet like he’s going to fight me. Batty red wings unfurled. He’s got these shorts on that hit well above the knees. Everything about him is crumpled and limp.

“Morning, Snow,” I say to his shorts. If I spoke to his face, I think I’d lose all this composure and briskness and melt into a hideous mess on his bed, next to his puddle of warmth. It’s tempting. But not at all helpful. “I’m thinking it’s time for a Sunday bath. When’s the last you had a shower?”

I need more than a shrug. A shrug is nothing, a shrug is the death of all that split-second fighting fire. That’s all I’m getting, though.

His hand is soft in mine. “Come on, Simon Snow.” I make him stand. “I’m going to wash your hair.” He doesn’t answer.

**SIMON**

I don’t know what to say. If I say no, he’ll let go of my hand. He’ll close the door.

Or maybe he won’t.

I do need a fucking bath.

“Baz?” I say, scared at how flat my voice is. “Okay.”

**BAZ**

The bathroom is a nad bit tiny, what with the mismatched clawfoot bathtub expansive wingspan and all. Simon’s sat on the edge of the tub. He’s staring at the tile on the floor.

I touch his shoulders, plucking at his shirt. “May I?” He nods real sad-like, and so I take the bottom hem and lift it off. It's not sexy or anything but I still feel warmth rise in my chest at the sight of his skin. Strange but familiar. And Merciful Merlin, I hardly believe he’s going to let me undress him. It’s not sexy. But it’s warm.

“Let me take care of you,” I say, even though he already is.

I want to hold his tired head in my hands. Or kiss his navel—squashed in this slumped position and protruding over his waistband—and flick my tongue around in it.

Simon shifts out of his shorts, then his boxers, and I feel so warm towards him. This boy. Sitting here, avoiding my eyes—but then he looks up, giving me this half-smile. I’m not ready. But I think he needs this basic care as much as I do.

The running water is soothing. The electric here is shoddy at best, so I spell warmth into it — _“Get into hot water!”_ He stiffens at the sounds of magic and I instantly regret it, but he doesn’t say anything.

I’m going to get my shirtsleeves all wet, so I lose my shirt too. Simon stands in the shower with his face straight at the head, mouth open. I soap up my hands and touch his waist, and he lets me.

“It’s okay,” says Simon Snow with his eyes closed.

I rub his middle with soap, then his arms and his shoulders, and he moves a bit to let me reach everywhere up here, but mostly he’s still. Simon is softer around the edges now. He feels good under my hands, and I’m scared to breathe in case I sigh too loudly. He might snap and slam the shower curtain on me... but it seems like no, I’m finally doing something right.

We haven’t touched much recently. He’s kissed me, but when I kissed him back he closed his mouth. Maybe he’s scared of me now. Can’t stand the feeling of my papery fingers on his; or maybe this is all him, and all bigger than me, and my silly little feelings are nothing but collateral damage.

Somehow that’s even worse.

But I understand if he doesn’t want to be touched. If it’s about sex—I don’t know if I could take that now, either—or being trapped—or something else. But whatever is going on there, it’s left behind right now. This is innocent. This is like hand-holding, my other favorite activity to peruse with this wonder boy, and it’s practical.

He lifts up his wang and I soap underneath and around it. Not like I’ve never seen it before. But Megara’s balls, Simon is one beautiful motherfucker.

We start at the neck and move gently, practically. I’ve all the time in the heavens. I smooth out each collarbone, the bumps behind his ears, his rosy nipples, his shining wet shoulder blades. All’s well. Really, really well.

**SIMON**

Baz is working the soap into my neck. I’m okay with him touching me, and I don’t know why, exactly. I’m letting it happen. I want it to.

I bend down and sit on the bath floor, my head resting against the edge. Baz turns off the shower, and he’s plugged up the bath so it’s full of warm clean water now. He cups water in his hands and wets my hair. Then he’s twisting shampoo into it. Scratching my scalp.

I don’t have to think, and I don’t. I just let him scratch.

**BAZ**

Oil is practically lifting off Simon’s hair. It’s unbearably silky. I keep rinsing it with the bath water and pulling his curls around.

Wet, they fall on his face so dark and flat. It’s a completely different frame. I save the picture forever: Curls almost to closed eyes, themselves almost peaceful.

He flicks water at me, hiding a smirk behind his hair. I splash him back, but as he’s already sopping, it doesn’t have the same effect. We wrap him in this huge bath towel and I rub his skin over the towel. I can feel his warmth returning as he drys, like someone doused the stove burner and its just mustered enough oil to catch again.

There’s Simon, sitting on the bare bathroom floor, wrapped a towel bigger than he is. He keeps opening and closing his mouth and looking right at me as I button up my shirt, replace my watch. It feels like getting cooked, being looked at.

**SIMON**

_“Baz, I’m sorry I’ve been so distant and I can’t drag myself out of bed. You deserve much more than...”_

_"Baz, maybe I'm too far gone and you should stop coming around and..."_

_“Baz, I’m sorry I got all stiff when you kissed me on Friday. I don’t know why it feels like suffocating but only from one end. All I want is to kiss you and hold you and have you…”_

_“Baz, I promise I’ll be happy again, it’s just taking a while to reconcile with the fact that I have no purpose and I was nothing and I am nothing…”_

_“Baz, I’m sorry I’m such a burden.”_

_“Baz, I can’t bear to have you look at me and…”_

_“Baz, please, never stop looking at me.”_

_“Baz, I love you.”_

There are too many things I could say. I go with, “Thank you.”

And, after a brief silence, I keep going.

“Magic was the best thing I had. It was everything. Magic was school, work, love, all my relationships, all my purpose. It was everything it was the only thing—it was you!” I’m wrapping my arms around myself like my innards might spill out. “Without it... I’m nothing. I feel like I was always nothing all along, always borrowing something and never really giving. I had no power, and I did what I was told—and I never even spoke that much. What did I give? What did I ever have to give?”

This is all so obvious, so stupid. He probably already knows it all. But I go on.

"It’s physical, too. I sleep and I sleep and I try, I do, but my body weighs so much now—and it’s not the wings, I know it’s not—” I press my hands to my forehead, slide them down to my mouth. Breathe, slowly, in spite of the weight…

Baz says, “I’m lucky to have you.”

I mumble, “It’s pathetic.”

“No magician has ever experienced a drain like you have. It’s unheard of,” says Baz. He's crouching opposite me. “Really—it’s never gone out of anyone all at once. Even if it was never really within you—which I doubt—that’s a hell of a vacuum to close. Everyone lies down after a hard spell; and you’re having a harder spell than is ever usual.” He twirls my curls around his fingers. “Even your exhaust is spectacular.”

It doesn’t feel spectacular; it feels dull and worn and bloated. But Baz thinks so.

“Quit being so ashamed of yourself,” he adds suddenly. “It’s giving me hives.”

“I feel so weak, all the time—”

“Tiredness isn’t weakness,” says Baz. “Grief is natural, grief makes sense, and you can’t rush it or bury it. I know. And it gets better, I swear, it does.”

Am I grieving? I've suffered a loss, no question…

He leans towards me, fingers brushing my forehead, and they feel cool and gentle and I don’t want to run away. I want to collapse. “I’m worried that you keep on internalizing everything. You’re a lot of things, Simon Snow, but you’re not the cause of this.”

“When will it go?” I say, loudly, and I feel tears coming. Fuck. Fuck. I should barricade myself in my bedroom again. All this and I still end up numb and crying...

But Baz doesn’t let me go this time. He holds me and I cry onto his back, my face against his hair. My wings are getting folded all over the place… I know it goes on too long but every time I push it away and try to breathe, he shifts or brushes my hand or grips my back a little more tightly. And new leaks spring.

Finally, I say, “I’m good now.” And mean it.

“For sure?”

“Really. Well. I’m alright.”

I know nothing’s been fixed. But this right here is my present, and everything feels good and open and less tight, and this is enough. I’m lucky he wants me. No. We’re both lucky.

“Everything’s okay, Simon,” he says. “You are the best thing you have... I should be thanking you.”

He calls me Simon when he’s serious.

**BAZ**

He’s so rosy post-cry. Those thick brown lashes all wet and shimmering. And his words. Hounds of hell. There’s so much Simon says that hurts me, but there’s nothing he can say that lessens my love.

I don’t even want to kiss him right now. A rare occurrence indeed. I only want to be here with him, for him. Everything I do is for him.

I dab him dry with the towel. Whatever happens, I’m going to be grateful. Even if both of us are still crying.

**SIMON**

It feels good to be clean. Baz tugs a shirt over my head, dressing me like he undressed me, completing the circle. He keeps leaving tiny kisses on top of the clothing, butterfly kisses. I jerk a little reflexively with each one, but it feels good.

I’m worn out, but in a lesser way. I don’t want to drain him… I hate myself for it … but it feels like he might actually never give up on me. And I’m grateful for this moment.

**BAZ**

I grip Simon's ankle, ready to slip on these old jeans I snatched off the floor, but he stops my hand with a touch. “Baz?”

“Yeah?” I say.

“Might need to magik those up a size.”

I laughs and bury his face in my lap. I love this softness. I think I love everything about him. So I draw my wand— _“Keep your trousers on!”_ Magic is still good when he asks for it.

I change his sheets while he folds a minuscule section of the clothes on the floor, and then we both lay on his bed on our backs. Just our fingertips touching. He’s folded his wings up beneath him, and they actually tuck away pretty neatly. This is still sad, but it's peaceful, and the windowshade is pushed up just a crack.

**SIMON**

I’m going to have to carry this weight, but that doesn’t mean I created it.

And maybe it’s alright if Baz takes some… maybe it’s the best thing I could ask for.

And it feels good to have jeans that fit perfectly.

**Author's Note:**

> Wayward Son was too quickly paced, but that just means we can flesh out some blank spots that we're thirsty for ourselves! 
> 
> Nothing too new or crazy here but I enjoyed writing, and I hope you enjoyed reading, my first posted fic! have a great week today! xo
> 
> svelkie


End file.
